Sunday Round-Up - November 17, 2013

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from outside the US mainstream media.  Today we look at the Republican stranglehold on Congress, the Euro-recession, war spending and the deficit, The Guardian editor's upcoming appearance before Parliament, and bee colony collapse.

In an article posted on its website on November 11, Rolling Stone magazine takes up the lock on Congress that Republicans have in spite of the growing gap between their policies and the wishes of the majority of the electorate.  Tom Dickinson explains how national Republicans have rigged the game by "waging an unrelenting campaign to exploit every weakness and anachronism in our electoral system.  Through a combination of hyperpartisan redistricting of the House, unprecedented obstructionism in the Senate and racist voter suppression in the states, today's GOP has locked in political power that it could never have secured on a level playing field."  The redistricting of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan is described in some detail.  The vast sum of money spent by Republicans in North Carolina to take over the state legislature in 2010, voter suppression laws, activist judges and the unprecedented use of the filibuster in the Senate are exposed.  And, as Dickinson notes, the Republicans are not done yet.  "In a project with the explicit blessing of Republican National Committee Chairman..., a half-dozen Republican-dominated legislatures in states that swing blue in presidential elections have advanced proposals to abandon the winner-take-all standard in the Electoral College. These states would instead apportion electoral votes by the favored candidate of each congressional district – a method currently practiced by only two, small, homogenous states, Maine and Nebraska. Thanks to the GOP's gerrymandering, such a change would all but guarantee that a Democratic presidential candidate in a big, diverse state like Michigan would lose the split of electoral votes even if he or she won in a popular landslide."

"The EU economy will remain flat in 2013, EU economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn said on Tuesday (5 November), as he downgraded the bloc's growth forecasts for 2014 and 2015...There was little to cheer for Europe's jobless. Unemployment levels are likely to remain virtually unchanged, although they are forecast to fall from 12.2 percent to 11.8 percent across the eurozone by 2015."   The November 13 EU Observer article should be a reminder to us of how austerity programs implemented to reduce deficits slow recovery from a recession.  The "sequestration" cuts, our own version of misguided austerity, will begin having a greater impact in 2014.  Combine this with the fiscal cliff negotiations and the possibility of another government shutdown and we may be in for an interesting ride leading to the 2014 mid-term elections.

Speaking of the US deficit, a Harvard report out earlier this year put the eventual total monetary cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars as high as 6 trillion dollars - or 35% of the 17 trillion dollars total national debt.  The DNA India website noted that this corresponds to $75,000 for every household in the country.  "There's a sense that we are turning the corner, but unfortunately, the legacy of these wars, because of decision about the way we fought and funded these wars, means we will be paying the costs for a long time to come," [Harvard Professor Linda] Bilmes said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. "We may be mentally turning the page, but we are certainly not from a budgetary and financial perspective."   As the Congressional budget discussions proceed, it should be helpful to keep in mind this graphic from the National Priorities Project.



 

In the UK, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has been asked to appear before Parliament to give evidence regarding the intelligence files leaked by American whistleblower Edward Snowden.  Rusbridger will appear at a meeting of the home affairs select committee amidst rising criticism from British intelligence agencies and Tories.  "Alan has been invited to give evidence to the home affairs select committee and looks forward to appearing next month," a Guardian spokeswoman said.  A New York Times editorial  warns that the freedom of the press so essential to democratic accountability, is being challenged by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron.



Finally, here's an update on the bee colony collapse that's been occurring around the world and threatening to impact fruit and vegetable production.  Ars Technica reported on October 21 that Italian researchers had cut through the complexity of causes that had surrounded the bee colony collapse.  Infections, insecticides and agricultural practices were all thought to be involved.  "Previous toxicology work in mammals indicated that a specific class of insecticides, the neonicotinoids, could influence the activity of genes involved in the innate immune system."  The researchers started by showing that the same is true in insects. Initially, they worked with everyone's favorite fruit fly, Drosophila, showing that the equivalent genes responded in the same ways in the flies. They then showed that the innate immune response isn't activated when these same flies are exposed to an infection.... Various infections may still be doing the ultimate job of killing the bees, but their virulence could be explained by compromised immune function, caused by a combination of insecticide use and agricultural practices. The results will also provide further support for the European Union's attempt to ban the use of neonicotinoid pesticides."  The relationship between insecticides and colony collapse had been legally challenged by Bayer and Syngenta earlier this year.  

The image of the European honey bee is from Wikipedia.

Tornadoes, Hunger, and Getting Angry

Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

- Plato

The personal tragedies wrought by tornadoes over the past few weeks in Oklahoma are just the latest reminders of the difficulties faced by ordinary people in the course of everyday life in this country. Untimely deaths from disease and accidents, impoverished and malnourished children, homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, urban violence, hate crimes, student massacres ... the list is seemingly endless. That is why I can't understand the positions taken by today's Republican Party. If you have the opportunity to do something to relieve or prevent the suffering of the vulnerable in our society, why on Earth would you choose not to?

Former Republican presidential candidate and former Senator Bob Dole, answering a question put to him by Fox News' Chris Wallace, said that neither he nor Ronald Reagan would feel comfortable with the GOP's present membership. Dole said that the party should hang a “closed for repairs” sign on its doors until it comes up with a few positive ideas.    A May 28 NYT editorial put it like this: "The difference between the current crop of Tea Party lawmakers and Mr. Dole’s generation is not simply one of ideology....Republicans used to set aside their grandstanding, recognize that a two-party system requires compromise and make deals to keep the government working on the people’s behalf. The current generation refuses to do that. Its members want to dismantle government, using whatever crowbar happens to be handy."

Dole is a staunch conservative and holds many of the same general policy positions as the Tea Party Republicans - although admittedly less extreme. There are few moderate Republicans around nowadays - at least in the Republican Party. The closest you have to moderate "Eisenhower Republicans" - people like former Senators Mark Hatfield of Oregon and Clifford Case of New Jersey - can now be found within the Democratic Party. Whether because of Republican obstructionism or because of his belief in his role as Compromiser-In-Chief, Obama has effectively become an Eisenhower Republican. This is not what we voted for in 2008 or 2012.   That said, his policy and budget positions are generally better than or, at least, no worse than, those of the Tea-Party-controlled GOP. (For a comparison of the various 2014 budget proposals, here's a link to a one-page summary from the National Priorities Project.)

There is so much to criticize in the proposed Republican budget that time and space do not permit even a partial listing. Their proposed cuts to social services can best be described as Draconian. And then there is the infamous sequester brought about by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which in turn was the compromise response to the phony debt-ceiling crisis initiated by Republicans. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 750,000 jobs will be lost or not created because of this austerity measure in this year alone.

"But", in the immortal words of Arlo Guthrie, "that's not what I come to talk about tonight." What I really want to talk about is hunger in America and the current and future proposed cuts to the food stamp program. The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”. Food insecurity then is the opposite: when you don't have enough food to maintain a healthy and active life.

Take a guess. How many Americans, citizens of the wealthiest country on Earth, live with "food insecurity"? Well, in 2011, 50.1 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 33.5 million adults and 16.7 million children. [Feeding America website] That corresponds to about 1 American out of every 6.

What was our elected representatives' response to hunger in America? The Republican-controlled House Agriculture Committee proposed cuts of $20.5 billion to the food stamp program over the next 10 years. The Senate Agriculture Committee proposed cuts of $4.1 billion. This is all part of the response to the phony deficit crisis - imposing austerity measures in the midst of a recession. On May 21, the U.S. Senate blocked an amendment to reinstate the $4.1 billion for food stamps. It was not just Republican obstructionism this time. For whatever reason, 28 Senate Democrats voted with all the Republicans for the 2013 Farm Bill which put corporate welfare ahead of  low-income families.

The differences in the farm bills will now be resolved in a joint House-Senate committee. As of December 2012, approximately 48 million people relied on food stamps. That's more than at any time in history and a direct result of the number of people thrown into poverty in the Great Recession. The House bill would drive 2 million low-income people off food stamps. Paul Krugman's excellent op-ed of May 30 analyzes these untimely and mean-spirited cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and concludes:

"Look, I understand the supposed rationale: We’re becoming a nation of takers, and doing stuff like feeding poor children and giving them adequate health care are just creating a culture of dependency — and that culture of dependency, not runaway bankers, somehow caused our economic crisis.  But I wonder whether even Republicans really believe that story — or at least are confident enough in their diagnosis to justify policies that more or less literally take food from the mouths of hungry children. As I said, there are times when cynicism just doesn’t cut it; this is a time to get really, really angry."

Yup.

RIP Frank Lautenberg

New Jersey lost one of its finest Senators in history on Monday morning. Frank Lautenberg had a consistently liberal voting record and he will be missed by the Senate majority. He had been ill for a while. But so important was his vote and so total his dedication, he was brought to the floor for several important Senate votes during his illness - including gun control. Unfortunately, thanks to the Republican filibuster, these last public services from the ailing Senator Lautenberg generally went for naught. You can rest assured that Republican Governor Christie will appoint a Republican until the special election later this year. Times will be even tougher for the Senate majority. With the next chance of changing Senate filibuster rules in 2014 and with the unlikely return of the House with its gerrymandered Congressional seats to the Democrats until the next census (2020), it will be a hard time for progressives.

Sunday Round-Up - May 26, 2013

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media. Today we look at Secretary Kerry's Israeli-Palestinian peace effort, the German press's dawning understanding that austerity "may not be working" in Europe, Pope Francis' comments on the world's poor, the NRA convention, Obama's counter-terrorism speech, and preparations for the Syrian peace talks. Sources: Haaretz, Der Spiegel, Pravda, Opera Mundi, Mother Jones, and Al Jazeera.

Kerry and the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks

Haaretz reported Friday that US Secretary of State John Kerry, in the Middle East for the fourth time in two months had "considered holding another round of talks with two sides on Monday, but said now is not the right time....'Netanyahu and Abbas have to take a week or two to make some difficult
decisions that would allow peace talks to resume', Kerry said before his departure. He urged both sides to exhibit leadership in order for that to happen." Kerry made clear (again) the US position on the Israeli settlements on Palestinian land: "construction must end." A senior Israeli official was quoted as saying "we are prepared to launch direct negotiations with the Palestinians immediately."

 

 

 

 

[Map is from Wikimedia Commons.]

 

 

German Media on the Euro-recession

The German magazine Der Spiegel reported on the increasing number of German newspapers acknowledging that the austerity policies put in place by the European central banks and supported by Merkel's government "may not be working." Charles Hawley writing in the May 16 post of Spiegel Online points to France's "new membership in the recession club as just the latest indication that the current strategy may not be working." The German business daily Handelsblatt comments on the austerity measures: "That one slides into a recession at the beginning is part of the plan. But the fact that it is lasting so horrifically long leads one to suspect that Europe's path is making the Continent sicker rather than healthier." While the center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung focusses on France's situation and asks "where are the ideas or the visions for how the EU can exist in our highly competitive world?", the left-leaning Die Tageszeitung notes that "alternative models for how to stimulate Europe's economy and fairly tax wealth exist only on paper and must be finalized."

 

The Pope, the Chancellor and European Youth

[Link to the Washington Post article on the rally at St. Peter's]

Pope Francis met with Angela Merkel, Germany's leader, recently selected again by Forbes magazine as the world's most powerful woman and "a leader largely identified by Europe’s economically suffering citizens as a champion of debt reduction, including painful austerity across much of the continent." The timing was exquisite. They met right after a 200,000 strong rally in St. Peter's square at which Pope Francis said “If investments, the banks plunge, this is a tragedy, if families are hurting, if they have nothing to eat, well, this is nothing, this is our crisis today.” Francis said his church “opposes this mentality” and pledged that it will be dedicated to “the poor people.” After the meeting, Merkel "joined the pope in expressing concern about the many victims of Europe’s economic crisis."  In a May 20 article Der Spiegel noted the particular hardships of the young people in Europe during the recession. With unemployment above 23%, the youth of Europe are in danger of becoming "a lost generation."  Unemployment is even worse in Spain (upper 50's%) and Greece (over 60%). Although almost nothing has been done either in the South or the North, the continually escalating unemployment numbers appear to have had an impact at last: "Suddenly Europe is scrambling to address the problem. Youth unemployment will top the agenda of a summit of European leaders in June. And Italy's new prime minister, Enrico Letta, is demanding that the fight against youth unemployment become an 'obsession' for the EU."

Guns, Kids, and the NRA

The United States' idolization of guns is covered in a May 15 Pravda article on the NRA's 142nd annual convention in Houston, Texas. Noting the attempt to appeal to young people, the article relates several cameos from the gun show at the convention, including this one: "Nearby, Sandy holds a small rifle. Pointing to the ceiling, concentrating. Closing one eye. Breathe. Shoot. Reload. The trebuchet is pink, small, looks like a toy. It has a plastic butt, but the metal pipe is black. Sandy smiles. At age four, she and her father, Eric, are choosing their first rifle. In a few months a birthday and, consequently, they will be able to bring the "gift" home....A rifle exactly like the one Sandy has caused a tragedy on April 30, in Cumberland County, State of Kentucky. A five year old boy shot his twin sister by accident, killing her. The gun had been given as a gift a year earlier." Frightening, huh? The article (translated from the Portuguese language "Opera Mundi" where it originally appeared) concludes: "The end of the first day of the convention in Houston is reached, participants are ready to sleep armed to the teeth. Like the rest of the U.S."

Obama's Counter-Terrorism Speech

David Corn in a May 23 post in MotherJones sees a glimmer of hope for civil liberties in President Obama's speech on counter-terrorism policies. Obama made the speech a day after the Administration admitted to the killing of four US citizens by drones. I'm not sure I see as much of a glimmer of hope as Corn does but at least it's better than what probably would have happened under a Republican administration. The President placed new restrictions on the use of drones and talked again about the necessity of closing Guantanamo. Corn admits that "Obama is not renouncing his administration's claim that it possesses the authority to kill an American overseas without full due process" and "not declaring an end to the dicey practice of indefinite detention or a conclusion to the fight against terrorism". But he concludes: "Obama, at the least, is showing that he does ponder these difficult issues in a deliberative manner and is still attempting to steer the nation into a post-9/11 period.." Two of the more positive highlights from the speech:

• The call for an end to "the post-9/11 authority to wage war Congress granted the president: 'I intend to engage Congress about the existing Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, to determine how we can continue to fight terrorists without keeping America on a perpetual war-time footing."
• The unreasonableness of the Congressional restrictions on closing the Guantanamo prison: "These restrictions make no sense. After all, under President Bush, some 530 detainees were transferred from Gitmo with Congress’s support. When I ran for President the first time, John McCain supported closing Gitmo. No person has ever escaped from one of our super-max or military prisons in the United States. Our courts have convicted hundreds of people for terrorism-related offenses, including some who are more dangerous than most Gitmo detainees." Obama is appointing " a new, senior envoy at the State Department and Defense Department whose sole responsibility will be to achieve the transfer of detainees to third countries" and he is lifting the restrictions on detainee transfers to Yemen (86 of the 166 still imprisoned are from Yemen).

Syrian Peace Talks

More than 80,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict since the March 2011 uprising. 1.5 million have fled the country. On May 21, Al Jazeera reported that "Syria's opposition and government are preparing to take part in an internationally-sponsored peace conference, according to Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations-Arab League mediator....Meanwhile, Moaz al-Khtaib, the former president of the Syrian National Coalition, said the opposition is open to negotiating with the government of President Assad. At a meeting of Syrian opposition groups in Spain on Tuesday, Khtaib said the opposition forces have no objection to a political solution to the conflict."   Several days later (May 24), the NYT reported that a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman had stated that the "Syrian government has agreed to participate in an international peace conference coordinated by Russia and the United States."

 

Sunday Round-Up - May 19, 2013

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media. Today we look at the ongoing Eurorecession, the Netanyahu government's (non) response to the Arab League's peace proposal, the money going to contractors supporting the US military presence overseas, and  climate change's "grim milestone". Also we have a special guest "op-ed" from the (sort of) mainstream media. Sources: EU Observer, The Guardian, Antiwar.com, TomDispatch.com, Mother Jones and, for the "op-ed", Harper's Magazine.

Eurorecession

It's official. The ongoing recession in Europe has become the region's longest slump of the postwar era. The austerity measures imposed for deficit reduction purposes have utterly failed to bring about recovery. The EU Observer reported: "The eurozone economy continues to shrink as Germany's economy grew by a meagre 0.1 percent in the past three months, while France slid back into recession, according to data from the EU statistics office Eurostat published on Wednesday (15 May). Shrinking by 0.2 percent in the first three months of 2013, the eurozone economy has now been in recession for the past one and a half years." France has been granted a two-year extension on its deficit reduction in one of the more reasoned moves made by the EU. Also Phillip Inman blogging in Thursday's Guardian points to a (finally) rebounding Japanese economy: "Gross domestic product rose 0.9% from the previous quarter, which translates into an annualised 3.5% growth rate." The growth is attributed to "the stimulus package put together by new prime minister Shinzo Abe[, which] could be generating the kind of feelgood factor Japan needs to end two decades of virtually zero growth. The eurozone needs to look and learn."   I'd add not just the eurozone. The phony deficit-reduction-crisis hysteria brought to the table by Republicans and subscribed to by some Democrats will damage the slow, fragile recovery here in the US.   If there is anything to be learned from the austerity failures in Europe, it is this: deficit-reduction austerity measures will only prolong the pain from the recession for those that are suffering the most. 

 

 

Arab League Peace Proposal

In late April, the Arab League presented a peace proposal that offered land-swaps that Israeli officials had previously insisted were necessary to a permanent settlement. In a May 15 post on Antiwar.Com, Jason Ditzwrites that, now that there is an offer on the table, "Israeli officials have clammed up, waiting for those offers to fall out of the headlines so they can get back to claiming the lack of progress isn’t their fault." The Arab League proposal has been dubbed a 'big step forward' by Secretary of State Kerry and "a great opportunity" to resume the stalled talks by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Ditz continues: "The current Israeli government, however, has offered no response to the proposal, apart from a few speeches condemning the Palestinians, while privately officials have conceded their biggest fear is that the offer is sincere, and that the US might be on board with it as well."

  

$365 Billion to Contractors in "Baseworld"

The US has a military budget larger than the next 13 highest-spending countries combined. This enormous waste of resources did nothing to prevent the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In the post cold war era, these expenditures are just plain obscene. David Vine in a May 14 post ontomdispatch.com sheds some light on where much of this money is going: "Set foot just about anywhere on this planet other than China, Russia, and Iran, and you’re likely to find some kind of U.S. base, installation, or shared facility, and some news that goes with it, though you could pay endless attention to the U.S. media and never know that." He estimates that we have about 1000 military bases overseas even with our occupation of Iraq ending and the Afghanistan War drawing to a close. And where does much of this money go? Vine writes: "I estimate that the Pentagon has dispersed around $385 billion to private companies for work done outside the U.S. since late 2001, mainly in that baseworld. That’s nearly double the entire State Department budget over the same period."

 

Climate Change's "Grim Milestone"

Tim McDonnell and James West post in May 10's Mother Jones: "Over the last couple weeks, scientists and environmentalists have been keeping a particularly close eye on the Hawaii-based monitoring station that tracks how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere, as the count tiptoed closer to a record-smashing 400 parts per million (ppm). Yesterday, we finally got there: The daily mean concentration was higher than at any time in human history, NOAA reported today." The 400 ppm is 50 ppm over what NASA scientist James Hansen called, in 1988, "the safe zone for avoiding the worst impacts of climate change. There is a bit of good news in the US, although not enough to change the trend of CO2 continuing buildup in our atmosphere. "Thanks to energy efficiency gains, increased use of renewable power, and policies to cut emissions from cars and power plants, carbon emissions in the US have fallen 13 percent in the last seven years." Unfortunately, I think that at least some of this decrease is due to the fact that the US for a good portion of those seven years has been in the midst of the biggest economic downturn since the Depression.

 

Guest "Op-Ed"

Since my college days, Harper's has been one of my favorite magazines. When much of US journalism was being bamboozled by neocons as to the legitimacy of invading Iraq and when the corporate media were wetting their collective pants about being "embedded" in the military during this blatantly illegal, unnecessary, costly and tragic exercise in American imperialism, Harper's consistently opposed the invasion. Harper's April 2013 issue has a chapter of John le Carré's new novel, A Delicate Truth, as well as an Afterword by le Carré, who broke onto the world's literary scene in 1963 at age 31 with the publication of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Here's an excerpt from his Afterword. Le Carré has just quoted Spy's fictional chief of the British secret service's predictable answer to the question: how far can we go in the rightful defense of Western values without abandoning them along the way? (Something to the effect that we can't be less ruthless than our enemy.)  Le Carré continues: "Today the same man, with better teeth and hair and a much smarter suit, can be heard explaining away the catastrophic illegal war in Iraq, or justifying medieval torture techniques as the preferred means of interrogation in the twenty-first century, or defending the inalienable right of closet psychopaths to bear semiautomatic weapons, and the use of unmanned drones as a risk-free method of assassinating one's perceived enemies and anybody who has the bad luck to be standing next to them....What have I learned over the last fifty years? Come to think of it, not much. Just that the morals of the secret world are very like our own."

Sunday Roundup - April 7, 2013

This is the first of what hopefully will become a regular feature of The Left Bank Cafe.  Every Sunday, I'll post links to articles appearing in online versions of newspapers or journals outside the mainstream media. The intent is to provide some insight and background that you may not be getting with your daily dose of US flavor-of-the-week news.

Weather and Climate Change

Drought in the Plains States, superstormss in the Northeast, blizzards in the UK - extreme weather events are becoming the norm throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Meteorologists ae finding it more difficult to predict the weather. In this April 6 article from The Guardian, a researcher traces the reason for the turbulent patterns to the rapid warming of the Arctic and its effect on the jetstream.

 

WTF?

Some of the more egregious policies from the Bush era are being institutionalized. One of the first actions of Obama after taking office was to sign orders to begin the process of closing the prison at Guantanamo. Four years later, there is little to no hope that this will actually occur. In this April 2 article from RollingStone, the author reviews how "Guantanamo Bay and the RDI program are both back in the news now, each for their own unsavory reasons, and their reemergence should be a reminder of how fully the Obama administration has embraced the logic underpinning the Bush regime's response to 9/11. "  Change you can believe in?

Gun Violence and Gun Laws

Gun deaths are projected to exceed deaths due to automobile accidents by 2015. Still, the assault weapons ban has gone down in flames and President Obama is struggling to get universal background checks, supported by 80-90% of the American public, through Congress. The Guardian points out that "the reality is that the majority of gun legislation in the US is enacted at the state level."  This is a link to an interactive Guardian article from Januaryon state gun laws.

And Mother Jones provides this insight in the profits being made by foreign weapons companies by selling into the open US market.

What We Didn't Learn from Europe

As the fiscal cliff's "sequestration" begins to put the brakes on the US economic recovery (e.g., just 88,000 new jobs in March), one wonders at how the austerity/deficit reduction ideology maintains support among policy makers. This article from the EU Observeranalyzes the failure of the European austerity measures and argues that growth "is likely to be subdued at best, recessionary at worst."

A Trip to France

I recently returned from a vacation in the south of France, easily one of the most beautiful regions on the planet.  Besides the markets and cafes, the sun and sea, the mountains and fields, the hilltop villages and historical cities, I got a brief glimpse of European politics. 

The French had just elected Socialist Francois Hollande as their President, rejecting the center-right politics of the previous President, Nicolas Sarkozy, and sending a resounding "no" to the rest of Europe on the austerity program favored by the current leaders of, for example, the UK and Germany - austerity measures that have not had any positive effect whatsoever on the economic recovery in Europe. 

As part of his campaign, Hollande also committed to an early withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan.  French troops will be leaving by the end of this year rather than next year as had been the plan under Sarkozy.  Would that our own President showed such wisdom.

Across the channel  in the UK, Labour picked up numerous seats in the May local council elections from the Conservatives and their Liberal Democrat allies.  Since their election to power in May 2010, the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition has been hard at work cutting services, increasing tuitions,and generally screwing up the British economy in the name of deficiti reduction.  Voters across the UK gave them their preliminary report card on May 3.

Now a single national election in France and some local elections in the UK may not be a sign that the swing towards the right has finally reached its furthest point this cycle.  And it certainly will not have as big an impact here on the deficit reduction crowd that refuses to raise taxes on the wealthy or to cut bloated military spending.  Still it is a sign of hope that perhaps some countries will be taking steps that actually will help resolve the ongoing global economic crisis. 

Another interesting contrast with American politics was in the TV political advertising.  After the Presidential election is over and after the President announces his Cabinet, the French go to the polls to elect their legislature.  What I saw on TV was a brand of advertising very different from that in the US.  The candidates and parties actually talked about their policies in brief statements.  They talked about what they were for and what they would do.  There wasn't any haranguing and no sign of the negativity so common here in the US.  Who can ever forget the "swift boating" of John Kerry?  Hell, the 2004 US elections created a whole new word for slime ball politics.  (The French legislative elections are ongoing today and we'll need to see if a Legislature able to work with their new President will be elected.  I hope they've seen how useless a split government here has been the past year and a half.)

Anyway, it was a refreshing contrast to American politics.  2012 will have the honor of being the most expensive, least transparent and potentially most negative election in our history.  But first a shout out to SCOTUS for Citizens United.  This is perhaps the most undemocratic and embarassing decision ever rendered in what is supposed to be the world's leading democracy -  "corporations are persons; spending unlimited money is free speech".  Maybe the only way real election reform will happen in the US is if enough people get so disgusted with our current methods of politicking that we get a constitutional amendment to address the issue.  It will not happen in time for this election but maybe future generations will look back at Citizens United as the last straw in our trend toward creating an oligarchy.